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Eiiibcrsit|) of tl^e State of Belxi g^orh* 



FIRST COMMENCEMENT 



Albany, July 10, 1879. 






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FIRST OOMMEIsrOEMENT. 



ASSEMBLY CHAMBER, NEW CAPITOL, JULY 10, 1879 



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ORDER OF EXERCISES. 

Prayer — Rev. Dr. FAIRBAIRN, Warden op St. Stephen's College. 
Introduction by the CHANCELLOR. 
Commencement Address : 

"Education and the State. The obligation of the State to provide for the 
education of its citizens — the extent of the obligation and the grounds 
on which it rests." 

By FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD, D. D., LL. D., L. H. D., 

President of Columbia College. 

TDZEG-iaiEIBS C01sr:FEiaE,ElD. 
Benediction — Ret. Dr. Regent WARREN. 






CHANCELLOR BENEDICT'S INTRODUCTION. 



Ladies and Gtentlemen : 

To-day is an epoch in the healthy and conservative growth of the 
University of the State of New York, during its corporate life of 
nearly one hundred years. Created as soon as the alarms of the Revo- 
lutionary war had passed away, it has never ceased to be felt in the 
educational growth of the State, and its influence has increased in a 
geometrical ratio. 

Before this time, however, signalized as it is by the occupation of 
this new capitol, it has not seemed to the Regents that the fulness of 
time had come for the establishment of this characteristic anniversary 
— a public commencement. The separate institutions, in which 
the work of actual instruction and educational culture is carried 
on, have always had their commencements which constitute literary 
festivals of inestimable value, in every quarter of the State. Not 
till now have the time and the occasion come, for a commence- 
ment of the University. 

This we now inaugurate, and I introduce to you the Rev. Dr. 
Barnard, the distinguished president of Columbia College, the oldest 
college in the State, as the orator of this our first commencement. 



By transfer 

N 8 '06 



COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS. 



Education and the State. The obligation of the State to provide for the edu 
cation of its citizens — the extent of the obligation and the grounds on which 
it rests. 

By FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD, D. D.,LL. D., L. H. D., 
President of Columbia College. 



Mr. Chancellor : 

It was on the 25tli day of November, 1783, that the British troops 
under Sir Guy Carleton withdrew from the city of New York. Thus 
ended the last act in the tragedy of blood and fire, which for seven 
anxious years had filled the country witli gloom. On the same day 
the Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the United States, accom- 
panied by his Excellency, G-eorge Clinton, Governor of the State of 
New York, made his entrance into the city. Salvoes of artillery, fired 
from the Battery, welcomed his arrival, and saluted the star-spangled 
banner as it went up on the flag-staff of Fort George. 

The heavily afflicted city breathed once more freely. 

Almost in the very beginning of the struggle this unhappy town 
had fallen into the possession of the enemy, and during the long 
period of hostile occupation which followed, it had suffered far more 
than the ordinary miseries attendant on military rule. Even in the 
hour of its downfall, and while the shame and grief of its humiliation 
were still fresh, there fell upon it a new and frightful disaster, which 
to the pain of subjugation superadded the menace of an immediate 
and more material distress. 

It was the 20th of September, 1776, a date memorably dismal in the 
annals of New York, The hour was midnight. A corps of occupation, 
detached from the main body of the invading army, had just reached 
their camping ground on the northern limit of the city, and were still 
engaged in pitching their tents, when a vast cloud of smoke arose upon 
the southern horizon. Tongues of fire were presently seen shooting up 
in the neighborhood of Whitehall Landing, and, directly after, an im- 
mense sheet of flame spread rapidly from river to river, and sweeping 
along the great central thoroughfare through the heart of the district in 
which the wealth, the refinement, and whatever of architectural beauty 



the city might have to boast, were concentrated, reduced, in a few 
brief hours, the whole region extending from tlie Bowling Green on 
the south to the streets above St. Paul's on the north, to a waste of 
black and smoking ruins. Of the better class of citizens, a fourth 
part were left houseless in one night, and of their accumulated wealth 
a large proportion had vanished in smoke and flame. 

Through all the sad years that followed, no hand was lifted to repair 
the desolation, or to remove its disheartening evidences from sight. 
Neither motive nor encouragement existed to stimulate the attempt. 
With the military occupation all the arts of peace had been paralyzed, 
all commerce, foreign and domestic, extinguished, and the spirit of 
enterprise was thoroughly broken. Gradually, on the other hand 
there crept into this desolate scene new features, lending to what was 
at first merely mournful, an aspect of repulsiveness. Houseless 
wretches, many of them Tory refugees from the country, the rest 
made up of the more destitute or profligate of the local population 
and the army, built for themselves among these ruins hovels for 
shelter, using, as far as possible, the still standing walls for the pur- 
pose, and completing and roofing in the comfortless and unsightly 
structures, with canvas stretched on spars from the shipping. 

But, miserable as was the aspect of this doomed and blasted quar- 
ter, the plight of that portion of the town which the conflagration 
had spared was not much better; so that when at last the exiled 
patriots, who had seven years previously fled in haste at the approach 
of Howe, returned to their long deserted and now dilapidated dwell- 
ings, the melancholy spectacle which met their eyes filled them with a 
sadness which even the remembrance of their newly established liber- 
ties could not dispel. 

With the restoration of the legitimate authority of the State came 
the return of hope ; but "it was only by slow and almost impercepti- 
ble degrees that the stricken town recovered the visible semblance of 
its earlier prosperity. And when about two months later, the Legisla- 
ture of the State of New York assembled for the first time in its prin- 
cipal city, it was under the influence of circumstances of the most 
depressing character that it entered on its labors. By what means 
most speedily to lift up the prostrate prosperity of the country, was 
the question which swallowed up every other in the anxious thoughts 
of the members. For not the city only, but the entire commonwealth, 
had sunk down in a common ruin. The exigencies of the war had 
drained its resources to exhaustion. All industries were stagnant. 
Agriculture alone maintained a feeble vitality. The public credit 
was at the lowest ebb, and private credit had ceased to exist. A 
worthless legal tender medium of exchanges gave to every ordinary 



business transaction the charactor of a game of chance, and arrested 
completely the operations of general commerce. 

Such was the state of things when the first message of the Governor 
after the peace was laid before the assembled Legislature. This mes- 
sage shows the profound conviction of the Chief Magistrate that, of 
all the calamities which war had brought with it, there were none 
greater than the ignorance which the dispersion of the colleges and 
the closing of the schools had entailed upon the rising generation. 
Among the matters of pressing urgency which, in the low state of the 
public fortunes, seemed to call for early consideration, none in his 
mind could take precedence of this ; and therefore, after reverently 
acknowledging the favor of an overruling Providence by which the 
seal had been put to the national independence, and indicating the 
principal matters of public concern requiring immediate legislative 
action, he continued in the following memorable words : 

" Neglect of the education of youth is among the evils consequent 
on war. Perhaps there is scarce any thing more worthy of your at- 
tention than the revival and encouragement of seminaries of learning; 
and nothing by which we can more satisfactorily express our gratitude 
to the Supreme Being for his past favors ; since piety and virtue are 
generally the offspring of an enlightened understanding." 

This wise recommendation of the Governor received the prompt ap- 
proval of both Houses. A bill was speedily introduced, and on the 
first day of May following was passed into a law, providing, among 
other things, "/or erecting an Univei'sity within this State." In this 
act are delineated the features of an organization the most comprehen- 
sive in its plan of all the educational instrumentalities yet created on 
this continent. Under it has grown up, during the century which has 
since elapsed, the splendid system of superior and secondary education 
of which we have so much reason to be proud ; and which places New 
York in many respects so far in advance of her sister States. 

The original act was found in some respects imperfect ; but chiefly 
in the respect that it was complicated by the attempt to combine the 
principle of general supervision with the special administration of the 
affairs of particular institutions. Its imperfections were remedied by 
substituting for it, three years later, a more perfect law, carefully pre- 
pared by the accomplished scholar and far-seeing statesman, Alexan- 
der Hamilton. Under this more perfect law was constituted the uni- 
versity of to-day — the organization which, nearly at the close of a 
century of signal and uninterrupted usefulness, has gathered its friends 
together to unite with it on this occasion in inaugurating a new era in 
its history. 

The interest of the occasion is heightened by the incidental circum- 
stance that we meet for the first time in this maarnificent edifice, erected 



6 

to be the seat of legislative and executive authority for the great State 
of New York. The splendor of the structure is in harmony with the 
grandeur of the Commonwealth. As we survey its massive propor- 
tions, or study the detail of its exquisite decorations, we cannot but 
feel gratified at the evidence they furnish that our lawgivers have 
ceased to be wholly controlled by the spirit of a narrow utilitarianism ; 
that the craving for the beautiful is at length recognized by them as a 
laudable, salutary, elevating, and refining sentiment ; and that, for 
the cultivation and improvement of the popular taste, that kind of 
teaching by object lessons which it is in the power of a legislature to 
employ, is perhaps no less effectual, than that for which the same leg- 
islature provides for other purposes in the public schools. 

Further, since beauty is an inspiration, and since the contemplation 
of its visible forms tends to purify the thought, soften the manners, 
and ameliorate the moral tone, may we not hope that these exquisite 
creations of art which we see around us may react upon the members 
themselves of the august body who here assemble, and give us more 
dignity in their proceedings, more kindliness in their discussions, more 
single-mindedness in their aims, more sincerity in their arguments, 
and more wisdom in their laws. 

Upon ourselves, too, may we not hope that the same influences will 
produce efi'ects equally salutary ? In that unpretending old building 
which still stands on the brow of the hill below us, we have met for 
many years to interchange sympathies, to compare opinions, to speak 
to each other words of cheer, and by union of action to endeavor to 
promote the advancement of the cause in which we are unitedly en- 
listed. The grimy floors, the time-stained and crumbling walls, the 
discolored ceilings, and the plain unpretending upholstery of the cham- 
ber in which our annual reunions were held, little as there was about 
them to kindle enthusiasm or excite the imagination, did not, to our 
consciousness, sensibly dampen our zeal, or check the genial flow of 
soul among us. In fact, in the deep interest concentrated upon the 
objects which brought us together, we gave no heed to our surround- 
ings. As we came not to indulge the pleasures of fancy but to gather 
the treasures of thought, so having found what we wanted, we went 
away feeling that it was good for us that we had been there. 

But now that we meet in this Aladdin-like palace, where it is impos- 
sible not to give heed to our surroundings, shall not we too find some- 
thing in these outward circumstances to quicken our sensibility to the 
beauty of moral truth, even as we perceive our taste to be improved in 
the discernment of the physical ? Shall there not be gradually in- 
fused into the communications here presented an aesthetic element the 
presence of which has hitherto been less perceptible, or at least percepti- 
ble less universallv ? And Avill there not be, in attending these re- 



unions, an added pleasure, the nature of which, though it may be dif- 
iicult to distinguish and define, may nevertheless with reason be 
referred to this cause ? At any rate, I am sure that it will not detract 
from the interest of these meetings, or from the literary merit of the 
performances that accompany them, whether as it regards profundity 
of thought or grace and polish of style, that they are held where the 
presence of beauty will always be exerting its silently ameliorating in- 
fluence alike upon the spirit and upon the intelligence. 

I have, I fear, extended too far these remarks, intended purely as 
introductory. 

Honored by the Eegents of the University Avith an invitation to 
deliver an address appropriate to the occasion of their first annual 
commencement, it has seemed to me that I could best discharge this 
duty by devoting the hour allotted to me to the discussion of a topic 
partly suggested by a consideration of the functions which they them- 
selves fulfill in our educational system, and partly by the discordant 
views of educational questions which I have encountered from time to 
time in the public journals. 

This topic is the relation of the State to education— the obligation 
of the State to provide for the education of its citizens — the extent of 
the obligation — and the ground on which it rests. 

The question, What is the duty of the State towards education ? 
has never been distinctly settled to the universal satisfaction. It has 
been debated very generally upon grounds more sentimental than logi- 
cal, especially by those whose views of the subject are most Hberal. 
With such, the elevating influence of education, the dignity of the 
human intellect and the necessity of culture to its development, the 
abject condition of a community where ignorance prevails, and the 
vice which usually follows in the train of ignorance, are fruitful 
themes of plausible argument. Such considerations show very con- 
clusively that education is a good thing, but they prove nothing clearly 
as to the duty of the government in regard to it. Health, piety, tem- 
perance are good things, but it does not follow that the government 
should establish agencies to make men pious, healthy or temperate. 
Moreover, the elevating influence of education is not strikingly per- 
ceptible, except where the process has been carried far ; so that the 
weight of this argument applies mainly to that higher education which 
can be the privilege only of the few. 

As to the importance of education, however, whether to the welfare 
of the State or the well-being of the individual, opinions are not at 
all divided. That provision ought to be somehow made for the edu- 
cation of the young, is matter of common agreement. But to what 
extent the State should charge itself with this important interest 
should devise the systems and establish the institutions of education, 



should exact and enforce the attendance of the individuals who are to 
be educated, and should defray the cost attending these operations, 
is a question in regard to which intelligent persons widely differ. It 
is not even universally agreed that the State should concern itself with 
the matter at all. There are radicals who hold that education is a 
purely individual interest, with which the State has nothing to do, 
and with which it should not meddle. There are extremists opposed 
to these, who [maintain that education is a universal interest with 
which the State has every thing to do, for which it should generously 
provide through all the grades even to the highest, and should throw 
freely open to all comers without charge. Neither of these parties is 
numerous relatively to the population ; but the one last named is 
locally very strong, and its views are practically illustrated in the per- 
manent maintenance of the only absolutely free college in the world, 
which is also the most largely attended institution of its name in the 
State of New York. The common opinion lies somewhere between 
the extremes here indicated ; if it is proper to say that there is any 
common opinion where there is no agreement as to the point up to 
which the obligation of the State extends, or as to the limit beyond 
which it cannot be pressed. 

This great diversity of views indicates the absence of any general 
recognition of the fact that there are settled principles to which the 
question at issue may be referred, and by which the extent of the 
obligation of the government to maintain education may be ascer- 
tained. The discussions which take place upon the subject scarcely in 
the least involve these ultimate principles, but are almost exclusively 
concerned with the immediate effects of education as making the in- 
dividual a better man, and therefore by inference a better citizen. In 
this form the argument is necessarily inconclusive, because it proves 
too much. It proves as well that we should have free national uni- 
versities and free state colleges, as that we should have free common 
schools. Becanse the prosperity of a community is dependent on the 
general intelligence of its members, because educated men become 
naturally the leaders of society, because the exclusion of the poor from 
the higher education handicaps them unfairly in the race of life, 
because the largest education freely offered is the only means by which 
the genius lurking in the ^humbler ranks of society can surely be 
detected and developed and made serviceable — these are all apparently 
potent reasons why opportunities for the highest culture should by 
freely open to all. 

But these arguments are just as applicable to special, technical, or 
professional education, as to that which is called general or liberal, 
and perhaps even more so. When we say that the prosperity of a peo- 
ple is dependent on its general intelligence, we mean that it is indi- 
rectly or remotely so dependent. But between the same prosperity 



9 

and the condition of the mechanic arts among the same people, the 
connection is immediate and direct. And if, in regard to general cul- 
ture, it is an unjust disci'imination to deny to the indigent the oppor- 
tunities enjoyed by their more fortunate fellow citizens, why not 
equally so to close against them the avenues to the scientific and 
learned professions ? Every argument in this category which can be 
urged in favor of opening literary colleges at the public expense free 
to all comers, can be advanced with equal propriety in favor of simi- 
larly opening free schools of agriculture and the mechaiiic arts, free 
schools of engineering, metallurgy, chemical analysis, and other 
branches of technology, and finally free schools of law, medicine, and 
why not even theology ? 

In reference to agriculture and the mechanic arts, the arguments 
have been so used, if not as yet pushed to their logical limit ; for Con- 
gress has been called upon to contribute largely to the endowment of 
such schools in every state, and has liberally responded to the call. It 
does not follow that because Congress has done this, its action has 
been wise. As to that I say nothing ; but merely remark in passing 
that the considerations which induced this legislation were not proba- 
bly those large and liberal ones I have above suggested — considerations 
which should logically lead to the endowment just as freely of schools 
for lawyers and engineers as of schools for mechanics and farmers — 
but the fact that there are, as politicians are quite well aware, a great 
many mechanics and a great many farmers in the country, and not by 
any means as many engineers or lawyers. 

If the government has a duty in the case, this duty should rest 
on logical grounds which admit of being distinctly stated. 

The objects for which governments are constituted are few and 
simple. They are : 

1. To provide for the common defense. 

2. To protect the citizen in his rights of person and property. 

3. To furnish him security in the peaceful prosecution of his 
chosen pursuit. 

4. To institnte tribunals for the administration of justice. 

5. To treat with other governments, and to adjust questions which 
may arise with such, amicably or by force. 

Strictly speaking, only such operations or measures of government 
are legitimate, which are promotive, more or less directly, of the ob- 
jects here enumerated. But as governments are supreme, and as 
rulers are usually inclined to take a liberal view of the extent of their 
powers, it happens that many governmental acts occur which would not 
bear the application of this severe test. Our Constitution, which 
authorizes Congress to raise money by taxation, anthorizes also the 
expenditure of the same, in the first place, for objects specifically 



10 

defined ; and secondly, for sucli others undefined as may be deemed 
promotive of the general welfare. This clause, which has been very 
freely interpreted, can be properly construed only in reference to that 
rule unwritten in the constitution, and which is a law of reason ante- 
cedent to and above the constitution, which limits representative gov- 
ernment to measures properly promotive of the objects for which 
governments are instituted. To understand '' the general welfare " 
in any other sense, is to open the door to possibilities of the most 
dangerous character. It would doubtless be promotive of the general 
welfare, if every man could be provided with constant and remunera- 
tive employment; or, failing that, with a pension sufficient to main- 
tain him in comfort; but it is not the business of the State to see 
after this, because such provisions have nothing to do with the objects 
for which governments properly exist. There are some among our 
countrymen, and many in other countries, who believe that it would 
be promotive of the general welfare, if all great business enterprises 
requiring large capital and the union of resources should be under- 
taken by the State, and all corporations rigidly prohibited. Others 
believe this doctrine to be a great mistake ; but it is really a matter of 
no consequence whether that is true or not, since it does not fall within 
the legitimate province of the government to do any such thing. In 
some parts of our country popular opinion leans strongly to the belief 
that the general welfare would be prodigiously promoted by an un- 
limited issue of irredeemable legal tender notes, and a disuse of all 
money in the form, of coin. We need not discuss the reasonableness 
of this belief in order to arrive at the conclusion, on the other hand, 
that the government ought not to do the thing demanded ; because 
such an act would self-evidently be in conflict with that duty of the 
government which requires it to protect the rights of property, and to 
maintain, or at least do nothing to impair, the steadiness of values 
which would be greatly menaced by such a proceeding. 

In order, therefore, to demonstrate the duty of the State to provide 
for the education of the people, it is not enough to allege that such 
provision must necessarily be promotive of the general welfare. It is 
necessary to show, further, that such provision conduces in some 
important degree to the accomplishment of the proper objects of 
government. 

Now, in order to the most satisfactory accomplishment of these 
objects, it will not be questioned that the largest knowledge and the 
highest mental cultivation are to be desired, and ought if possible to 
be secured, in the men who stand immediately at the head of affairs. 
But that it is equally essential to good government that the people 
generally should possess similar intelligence and cultivation, is not 
immediately obvious. In States whose rulers belong to, or are derived 
from, a particular and limited class, the immediate ends of good gov- 



11 

ernment may be sufficiently subserved by the education of tins partic- 
ular class. But even in such a State, it does not follow that the 
education of the people is likely to be without its use to the govern- 
ment, or matter of indifference to it. For it is to the interest of 
autocrats, even, that the people should be content, and therefore that 
industry should thrive, and therefore that the industrial class should 
be intelligent. History is full of monitions to this effect, from the 
secessions of the plebeians at Eome down to the communistic com- 
motions of the present day. As education is promotive of the peace 
of society, therefore it is to be expected that it will find favor with 
autocratic governments, through the mere instinct of self-preservation. 

But despotic governments find an additional reason for promoting 
the education of the people, in the opportunity it affords for guiding 
and controlling the sentiments, as well as of cultivating the intelli- 
gence. As the impressions made upon the mind in early life are the 
most enduring, so the duty of obedience to the monarch and of rev- 
erence for his representatives may be most effectually inculcated among 
the lessons of the schools. And as governmental supervision may also 
take care that no disturbing questions of public policy shall find a 
place in the system of instruction, so it is possible, by a skillfully 
constructed educational scheme, to provide more efficacious safeguards 
for the stability of political institutions than can be found in any sys- 
tem of police. Such an educational system affords a capital example 
of the practical wisdom of the policy which prevents the occurrence of 
evils, over that which would restrain or cure them after they have 
occurred. 

To a certain extent, under a representative government, similar 
reasons exist why the State should charge itself with the education of 
the young. If there is danger to the peace of society, arising from the 
pressure of want among the industrial classes, this danger is just as 
great under one form of government as under another. And though 
a system in which the ruler is the elect of the people does not make 
reverence for the person of the chief magistrate a duty to be incul- 
cated, it does require reverence for his office, and for the law of which 
he is the visible embodiment, with no less positiveness; and in the 
absence of this sentiment, its stability is no less precarious. 

Under a democratic form of government, however, additional rea- 
sons present themselves why the citizen should be educated. Under 
such a government, every great measure of State policy must be settled 
at last by the voice of the people ; and it will be settled wisely or un- 
wisely according to the degree of the popular intelligence. Such, at 
any rate, would be the case if the settlement of public questions by 
the popular vote could always be regarded as an expression /of the 
popular judgment, and not merely, as to our misfortune it often is, of 



12 

the popular will. The distinction is important ; for in many instances 
there is reason to think it is not so much the merit of a proposed meas- 
ure that governs what we are accustomed to call the vote of the enlight- 
ened freeman, as it is the party flagon which the measure is inscribed, 
or the bearing it may have upon his section or his neighborhood. 

Many of these questions, indeed, are of a nature too intricate to be 
correctly judged on their merits by the average voter. According to 
the abstract theory of republican government, they are not to be so 
judged ; nor is it presumed that they will ever be referred to the direct 
arbitrament of the popular vote. This theory assumes that the rep- 
resentative is not only to act but to think for his constituency. It 
recognizes as an axiom the proposition that statecraft is a science, in 
which no man can be an expert except by dint of much study, of thor- 
ough knowledge of the experience of the past, and large observation 
of the conditions and needs of the present. According to this view, 
therefore, questions of State policy should be decided by statesmen, 
precisely as questions of law are decided by judges. 

It is accordingly, in this theory, a necessary assumption that the 
representative will be a statesman, or will be as near an approach to 
that character as the community he represents affords. He will be one 
of the few whose minds have been enriched by the knowledge, and 
whose faculties have been disciplined by the training, which the high- 
est education furnishes. He will probably be thoroughly versed in 
history, and familiar with the principles of public economy and of 
governmental science. He will have been selected by his fellow-cit- 
izens because of his possession of these qualifications, and because 
they desire to profit by a wisdom which they feel to be superior to their 
own. Finally, he will be maintained with some permanence in his 
prominent position, because the reasons which originally placed him 
there will be reinforced by the consideration that his power of useful- 
ness is increased by every year of added experience. In a representative 
republic theoretically perfect, therefore, the business of the State will 
be as certainly confined to a limited number of men fitted by training 
and by experience for the proper discharge of their duties, as under an 
aristocratic or a monarchical government ; the difference only being 
that, in the republic, the rulers and lawgivers hold their important 
trust from the free choice of their fellow-citizens, and not by inherit- 
ance or asserted divine right. 

But the ideal representative republic is an idea only — a mere Uto- 
pian dream. It never has had an existence in fact; and so long as 
human nature continues to be what it is, it never can exist. Our own 
Federal Constitution presents us the skeleton outline of such a 
scheme, of which it was intended perhaps to embody the reality. But 
so far is it from being true that our representatives are selected for 
their breadth of culture, largeness of information, or repute for sound 



13 

judgment or elevated principle — these characteristics often prejudice 
rather than promote the prospects of a candidate for political success. 
And so far is it from being true that the representative is expected to 
be guided by his personal convictions, or permitted to exercise his 
own best judgment in the votes he may give upon public questions — 
his course is prescribed to him in advance by a dictatorial power which 
he cannot resist, or resists only at the price of his position and with 
the certain penalty before him of ignominious degradation. So far 
therefore as the ultimate decision of questions in our legislative 
councils by majority of voices or by show of hands is concerned, it 
matters not whether our representatives are able or weak, well- 
informed or ill-informed, wise or foolish, eloquent or dull ; the practi- 
cal result is the same, because it has been foreshadowed from the 
moment the counting of the ballot-boxes has shown who were the 
men who were to cast the votes. 

The representatives, nevertheless, are not usually of the weak or the 
foolish or the dull, nor always (though they are too often) of the ill- 
informed. It is not altogether matter of indifference to the con- 
stituency what manner of man shall speak for them in the councils of 
the State. They prefer a strong man because they mean to profit by 
his strength ; they respect intellect, but intellectual independence not 
at all. What they want in a representative, in short, is an advocate 
and not a judge. 

The reason of this is not far to seek. Little as the debates in our 
legislative halls may have to do with the final disposition of the meas- 
ures to which they relate, and of which, in ninety-nine cases out of 
the hundred, the fate is as perfectly well known before the debate begins 
as after it is over, yet these debates have very much to do with the 
probable constitution of the same legislative body after another elec- 
tion. The floods of oratory, therefore, which periodically deluge the 
august Houses of State and Federal legislation, are not designed or in- 
tended to impress or convince those upon whom they are directly 
poured out; but they have their motive in the hope that, by their re- 
freshing irrigation, diffused over the broad surface of the country, 
they may nourish into vigor a growth of popular opinion favorable to 
the political organization to which the orator belongs. Thus the real 
business in which our legislative bodies are mainly engaged when they 
seem to be legislating, is the management of a coming political cam- 
paign ; and the noise and confusion, apparently signifying nothing, 
that occupy so much of their time, have really an important signifi- 
cancy, since they are the mingled sound of the trumpets and of the 
shouting of the captains, stirring up the scattered legions to gather 
for the fray. 

Our actual government, therefore, though republican in foxm, is in 



14 

its substance a democracy ; differing only from a pure democracy in 
the fact that the voice of the people is expressed not directly but min- 
istei'ially — that is, by the intervention of authorized agents. It is 
probably only owing to the vast magnitude of the body politic, and 
the Avide extent of territory over which it is scattered, that the minis- 
terial form is not abandoned, and every question of public policy sub- 
mitted at once to popular arbitrament, and decided summarily by the 
popular vote. This would be in strict conformity with the spirit 
which has ruled the political world in our country ever since the cen- 
tury began ; and which has found its expression and produced its prac- 
tical results in such measures as the removal of all the limitations 
which once existed in all the original States to the universality of the 
suffrage, the curtailment of the appointing power, and the substitu- 
tion of popular election for executive discretion in the choice of all 
public officers, including judges of the highest grade. Perhaps no 
more striking example of the operation of this spirit can be found 
than is furnished by the complete frustration in practice of the seem- 
ingly ingenious scheme of the constitution designed to remove the 
choice of a president of the United States to the farthest possible dis- 
tance from the people, and to intrust it to the untrammelled judgment 
of independent electors chosen for their pre-eminent fitness to exercise 
this high responsibility. So careful were the framers of the coustitu- 
tion to guard against the possibility of bias in the minds of these elect- 
ors, that they inserted into the constitution a provision disqualifying 
from the exercise of such a function all members of the national leg- 
islature, and every person holding an office of trust or profit under the 
government, no matter how insignificant. Practically we know that 
the electors appointed under this scheme are shorn of all independ- 
ence, and debarred from the exercise of any discretion whatever in the 
casting of their ballots. The ticket they are to vote is prescribed to 
them even before their own election ; and their action is so purely me- 
chanical that it might just as well be discharged by a convention of 
ingeniously contrived automata. The careful safeguards against bias 
have no longer any significancy ; for no matter what the personal bias of 
the individual elector may be, it cannot in the slightest degree influence 
his official acts. Yet we see the solemn farce still maintained of a 
reverence for forms from which the substance has gone out; and the 
whole country is agitated, and the peace of the union imperilled, in a 
controversy over the question whether some particular elector, at the 
time of his nomination, had not held the important and lucrative 
office of village postmaster or deputy marshal to a federal court. 

If therefore statecraft has not ceased to exist in the United States — 
if we have still among us a class of men whose profounder knowledge 
and larger wisdom fit them better for the business of legislation and 



15 

the duties of administration than the majority of their fellow-citizens 
— it is safe to say that snch science and such men do not control the 
course of our public affairs. Our public policy bears the stamp of the 
average wisdom of the people, as it is the expression of their will. 

Now there are very few of the questions which arise in the political 
arena which are not environed with difficulties. There are few of 
which a plain man of limited information and moderate capacity would 
be likely to arrive independently at the most judicious solution. There 
are few which are not more or less embarrassing to the best educated 
men, and on which there are not important differences of opinion even 
among those who have studied them most profoundly. But the dif- 
ferences of experts are differences for which they can assign reasons, 
and in regard to which, by discussion, they may possibly arrive at 
agreement; while the differences of common or ignorant minds are 
haphazard differences, determined sometimes by prejudice, sometimes 
by blind subservience to party, sometimes by self-conceit and the pride 
of opinion ; for it is particularly noticeable that men are confident of 
their own judgments in political affairs just in proportion as their 
knowledge is less and as their means of judging are more imperfect. 

Look at a few of these questions which are continually in agitation 
in one form or another before the public, and are in one form or another 
continually the subjects of demands for new legislation. We find 
among them, for example, money and the currency, taxation, free trade 
and protection, tlie public credit, tlie limits of State and national sov- 
ereignty, infernal improvements, subsidies, mo7topolies, labor and capi- 
tal, race prejudice, the navigation laws, free elections, honest elections, 
and many more. Examine any one of these — taxation, for instance. 
See how, under this general question, subordinate questions immedi- 
ately arise: How may taxation be most equitably distributed? Should 
personal property be taxed ? If so, what is personal property ? How 
shall corporations be taxed ? If on their visible property, how about 
the certificates of stock Avhich represent this visible property ? Shall 
mortgaged property be taxed ? If so, shall the mortgage be taxed 
also ? Shall incomes be taxed ? No proposition carries with it a 
stronger prima facie semblance of equity. But how shall incomes be 
ascertained ? And is the same rule to be applied to a stipend which 
dies with the individual, and to interest on loans or rents of real estate, 
which are practically perpetual annuities ? Also, if real estate under 
lease is directly taxed as property, should the rent of real estate be a 
second time taxed as income ? 

The question of taxation involves the more complicated question of 
customs-duties. This with all governments is a favorite form of tax- 
ation, because the burden which it imposes is unconsciously borne. 
The subordinate questions which it presents are endless. Considered 



16 

merely as a system of taxation, without regard to its influence on 
other interests, the aim of course should be so to adjust the tariff as 
to raise the largest revenue with the least cost for collection, and in 
the manner least oppressive to the people. Will this end be accom- 
plished by a uniform rate of duty upon all imported commodities ? 
Experience says not. What principle then should govern in the dis- 
criminations admitted ? Should a heavier impost fall upon the luxu- 
ries than upon the necessaries of life ? Will not the object be secured 
just as effectually and much more simply by confining taxation to a 
few articles of large but necessary consumption, leaving all others 
free? Granting this, should articles capable of being so richly pro- 
ductive of revenue as tea and coffee be excluded from the list because 
they are in so general use, and in order, to use the language of the 
philanthropic demagogue, to secure to the workingman the blessing 
of "a free breakfast table"? If for this reason tea and coffee are 
exempt, shall the same reason avail for sugar and salt, which seem to 
be as necessary to the free breakfast table as tea and coffee ? 

Here we strike the rock. 

We cannot touch the subject of taxation upon importations with- 
out bringing up another and a larger and a still more vexed one — 
the expediency of excluding the products of foreign industry from 
free competition in our markets with those of our own country. It is 
pleasant to talk about a free breakfast table when the tea of China or 
Japan is in question, or the coffee of Java or Eio ; but when we speak 
of the sugar of Havana or the salt of the Bahamas, the freedom of the 
breakfast table suddenly loses its interest in Louisiana and New 
York. 

What has been said on the subject of taxation is designed only as an 
illustration of the difficulty presented by the questions of State policy 
which are constantly in agitation before the people, and which, under 
our system of government, must be ultimately decided, wisely or un- 
wisely, by the majority of voices. Is it not of the highest importance 
that they should not be 4ecided wholly by chance or caprice, or by 
the influence of delusions artfully imposed upon ignorance by design- 
ing demagogues ? Is it not desirable that the people shall be so 
educated that they may, at least to some extent, understand these 
things, and cast their votes under the dictates of a sober judgment 
and not of a blind impulse ? Moreover, if these questions are difficult 
— confessedly so difficult that even the men of largest knowledge are 
not at one in regard to them — is there any degree of education which 
it is practicable for the State to enforce upon its citizens, in providing 
for which it would not be directly promoting the objects for which 
governments are constituted ? All human wisdom is indeed imper- 
fect, and if it were possible that an entire people should be subjected 



lY 

to the highest degreee of education which it is in fact the privilege 
only of the favored few to enjoy, it does not follow that their legisla- 
tion might not be sometimes mistaken. Grant this, yet, in the cir- 
cumstances supposed, such mistakes would be comparatively rare, and 
minds trained to connect effects with causes would soon detect them 
and apply the necessary remedies. But a chief benefit of such sup- 
posed large and general culture would be its power to prevent the 
suggestion, or at least the mischievous propagation, of wild and vision- 
ary, not to say dangerous and disorganizing, political schemes and 
theories, such as are continually disturbing the peace of our country 
and menacing the security of its institutions — schemes and theories 
against which we have constantly to wage an uphill fight, chiefly 
against ignorance, but also against the malignant passions that igno- 
rance engenders. An universal culture of this high character is of 
course in the nature of things impossible. But when in this world, 
as is generally the case, the summum honum in any direction is beyond 
our reach, we are not justified in neglecting to do what we can to ap- 
proach it. An imperfect education is better than no education at all. 
Partial information is better than total ignorance. And any degree 
of culture prepares the mind to receive with greater profit the further 
instruction which may come with experience and observation, or 
through the teachings of the press, or through the continual discus- 
sions of public questions which are always going on before the people 
between men who have made them a study. 

What the State therefore should do for education should be limited 
only by the possibilities which the nature of the problem presents. 
The question should not be how little it need do, but how much it can 
do. It need do nothing at all, if we want ',nothing more than that 
there should be a government ; it should omit nothing that it is prac- 
ticable to do, if we desire also that there may be a good government. 
We come then to the question, How much can the State do for 
education, and how can it best do it ? 

Before replying, let us first observe that a great deal of the knowl- 
edge possessed by men in adult life, no matter how limited or how 
extended may have been theii- education in youth, is self-acquired 
knowledge. Furthermore, much of their power of acquisition — that 
is, of the facility with which they apply their powers to the discovery 
of truth — comes from the discipline of experience, and not from that 
of the schools. It is strictly true, therefore, that all men are more or 
less self-educated ; and that it is after all more from the education 
they owe to themselves, than from that which they derive from schools 
that the degree to which they are able to make-themselves felt in their 
generation is due. More than that — even of the education they receive 
from schools, much the greater part is their own work. The schools 
2 



18 

furnish them the opportunities for doing this work, and the teachers 
are their guides in doing it; but that their own agency in the result 
is after all the essential thing, is manifest from the fact that these 
influences operate very differently upon different individuals, profiting 
some very greatly, and others hardly at all. 

But to self-education, whether in or out of schools, certain element- 
ary instrumentalities are necessary. These are written and printed 
letters and other characters significant of ideas. The ability to read 
opens to the seeker after knowledge the accumulated stores of all the 
centuries ; and assuming him to have time and disposition, and in the 
outset some judicious guidance in the choice of books, there is no 
limit to the extent to which he may push his acquisitions. But 
the danger is, and the probability is, that the immature learner, pur- 
suing thus a course of independent study, will read superficially, im- 
methodically, and without frequently and carefully recalling and 
restating in his own mind the facts of knowledge he has acquired. 
His knowledge is thus liable to become a confused knowledge, or a half 
knowledge, incapable, for want of precision, of useful application ; 
and the reflex effect of his mental labor upon the faculties it calls into 
exercise will not be likely to promote their vigor, or increase his 
power to concentrate and control them. It is partly to prevent these 
consequences, but chiefly to insure that the young, after learning to 
read, shall read at all — or at any rate shall read the books which they 
ought to read — that schools are provided, and that schools are neces- 
sary. The function of the teacher is to direct the reading, to enforce 
its thoroughness, and to ascertain the resultant effects which it leaves 
in the mind of the learner; correcting these where necessary, or put- 
ting the pupil in the way to correct them himself For I hold that, 
in training, the business of the preceptor is not so much to teach (in 
the ordinary sense) as to make the child learn. I mean by this that 
when the facts of knowledge which the child is expected to acquire 
are capable of deduction from facts he knows already, he should be 
led to reach them through this process of deduction, and not be 
furnished with them ready made, as isolated facts of information. 
Nor should the teacher unnecessarily unfold to him the successive 
steps of this deduction. If the pupil's powers of analysis and syn- 
thesis, of comparison and logical arrangement, are ever to be inde- 
pendently useful, he must begin to use them independently in the 
earliest stages of his education. Hence I am by no means disposed 
invariably to concur in the eulogies I hear bestowed upon popular 
teachers because of their practice of making every knotty point in 
their lessons clear to their pupils by copious explanation. I would 
much rather hear of their success in making their pupils find their 
way out of their perplexities for themselves. That a good teacher will 



19 

possess ill a high degree the power of clear exposition may be taken 
for granted ; but that he should use this power in order to relieve the 
learner of the wholesome task of self-instruction, is a very different 
and is a very unadvisable thing. In virtue of this power, the good 
teacher will be aware through what process of thought his pnpil must 
pass in order to reach the conclusion desired ; and his skill as an 
educator will be shown in so presenting the materials as to turn the 
thought in the right direction. 

In speaking thus, I am of course intending my observations to 
apply to that early stage of the educational process, where the object- 
ive facts of knowledge acquired are of less value to the learner than 
the subjective results which attend the process of acquisition. At the 
later stage, at which the purpose is rather to inform than to discipline 
the mind, that teacher is undoubtedly the best who is capable of con- 
veying the largest amount of information in the most succinct form, 
and who therefore possesses in the highest degree the power of clear 
exposition. 

To return — since without the knowledge of letters and numbers the 
process of self-education cannot go on, it will be questioned by no one 
who allows the State to have any duty in the case, that every citizen 
should be taught to read and write at the public expense. Here, in the 
view of many, the duty of the State is ended. But this sort of instruc- 
tion is not education ; it is providing only the implements of education. 
The objector admits this fact, but claims, on the other hand, that when 
the State puts the individual in condition to educate himself, he must 
be himself responsible for the failure if he is not educated. More 
fully stated the contention is as follows: It is impossible to compress 
into the compass of a few brief months or years (which is all that, in 
the case of the average citizen, can be given to education) such an 
amount of useful information as may qualify an individual to under- 
stand the various complicated questions which arise in political life 
If, therefore, such knowledge is to be acquired at all, it must be 
acquired through the processes of self-education ; and when the State 
has furnished the citizen with the instrumentalities necessary for this, 
she has done all that can reasonably be demanded. His failure to 
make the acquisition, should he fail, may be a misfortune, but this 
misfortune is not the fault of the State. 

Others, looking at the subject in a slightly different light, reach the 
same conclusion by a different process of reasoning. The State, they 
say, imposes on its citizens certain duties, and subjects them to certain 
restraints, all of which are expressed in its written laws. Though 
these laws are printed and widely published, their publication is of no 
avail to those who cannot read. It is unjust to subject men to pen- 
alties for disobedience to laws which they know nothing about, and 



20 

which they have no means of knowing. Therefore the State should 
see to it that every citizen is able to read and write ; and then, if any 
one neglects to know what the law is, and infringes its provisions 
through ignorance, his ignorance is criminal, and if he suffers in 
consequence, his suffering is just. 

This argument is defective. If, as the argument admits, it is 
morally wrong to make men suifer for violations of laws which they 
have no means of knowing, it does not correct the wrong merely to 
provide the means of knowing, so long as they are sure to continue in 
io-norance that there are any such laws, or that it is their duty to 
know them. In the case of the man who cannot read, ignorance of 
the law is attributable to a material obstacle ; in that of one who can 
read, but without any purposed neglect does not — because, for 
instance, he never heard of the laws, doesn't know where to find 
them, is iinaware that they concern him, or for any other twenty 
similar reasons — like ignorance may be attributed to a moral obstacle 
cutting him off just as effectually. If then the State has a responsi- 
bility in the first case, why not in the second ? The argument is 
therefore defective in assuming that by teaching men to read, the State 
discharges herself of an obligation, when the fact is that by doing so 
she only changes the form of the obligation. It is consequently an 
argument which, if it proves any thing, proves that the State should 
do a great deal more than the thing proposed — should in fact teach 
laws rather than letters — and which, by the same rule, demonstrates 
that to teach letters will be no longer obligatory, when the laws are 
taught without them. 

But, once more, the argument rests on a fallacy. It assumes that 
the citizen who fails to acquaint himself with the letter of the written 
law is always in danger of incurring through ignorance some serious 
penalty. If this is true, who of us is safe ? Who is there in this 
assembly who can truly say that he has read the written laws of his 
country? If you, gentlemen. Regents of the University of the State 
of New York, presidents and professors of colleges, principals and 
instructors of our higher seminaries of learning — if you, gentlemen, 
cannot claim familiarity with the two or three hundred volumes of 
statutes at large which have gone forth from the high place where we 
are assembled to-day ; if you are not much better acquainted with the 
digests of these statutes which have been from time to time promul- 
gated ; if you are not fully possessed of the contents of the new code 
with which the Legislature and the bar and the chief executive of the 
State have been struggling for the past two years ; and if most of you 
are probably not quite clear even as to those particular points of 
difference in regard to this compend which have formed the gravamen 
of the controversy — how can it be supposed that the humble citizen. 



21 

whose educatiott begins and ends with the knowledge of printed 
characters, and with the ability to read with difficulty, will know these 
things any better than you ? And if he is in peril through ignorance 
how happens it that we are not so equally ? 

The fact is that none of us are in any such danger. The general 
laws to which serious penalties are attached are laws concerning acts 
which we do not need to be told are wrong. They are the mala m se 
concerning whose character conscience is a better authority than any 
written code. Conscience may not indeed distinguish, as the statute 
does, between their degrees of turpitude, or inform us what depth 
of disgrace, or how many years of penal servitude each may draw 
after it ; but conscience will tell us what is much better than that, 
that we must not do any of them at all. 

This argument therefore for limiting the education provided for the 
people by the State to the inculcation of the merest rudiments of 
knowledge, is wholly fallacious. If there were no reason but this why 
the State should concern itself with popular- education, there would 
be no reason at all. 

But it is argued again that the ability to read and write contributes 
materially to the intelligent transaction of business, and that this is 
true in every walk of life ; therefore that the State should exact and 
enforce education to this extent, because to this extent it is equally 
profitable to every citizen, and the liberality of the government is justi- 
fied by the impartiality of the distribution. It has however been 
already pointed out that the argument which infers the duty of the 
State from the benefit of education to individuals cannot be main- 
tained. To care for the interests of individuals as such is no part of 
the business of the government. Men get along through life who 
cannot read. They .could doubtless get along better if they could 
read ; but why on this account should the State help them ? 

The proper form of this argument, however, is not to present it as 
a question of individual interest, but of individual efficiency as a 
factor in the strength of the commonwealth. In this sense, the 
increase of individual efficiency is a public benefit. The joint result- 
ant of the increased efficiency of all is to lift a people higher in the 
scale of civilization, to stimulate among them the progress of the arts, 
to diversify and perfect their industries, to increase their power of pro- 
duction, and thus to secure for them larger material resources at home, 
and to command for them greater respect abroad. Whatever thus 
contributes to the general prosperity of a people, contributes to its 
security against aggression, and strengthens the hands of its govern- 
ment in the discharge of its essential functions, especially of that 
which consists in providing for the common defense. 

But if upon this ground we can argue in favor of elementary edu- 



22 

cation, the same reasoning will justify us in going much further. If 
merely to possess the rudiments of knowledge, or if only to have com- 
mand of the implements by which knowledge is acquired, is so to 
increase the efficiency of individual industry as sensibly, where such 
knowledge is general, to advance the general prosperity, there can be 
no doubt that every larger acquisition similarly diflfused must be 
attended with analogous results to a more marked degree. The ability 
to read is undoubtedly a valuable accomplishment ; but to read with 
profit one should have some such antecedent knowledge as to enable him 
to read ^^nderstandingly. What ideas, for example, are likely to be 
gathered from the columns of a daily journal by one who is ignorant 
of the geographical divisions of the earth ; of the varieties of climate 
and production of different regions; of the population, degree of civ- 
ilization, political importance, and military strength of different 
nations ; of the forms of government, peculiarities of religion, and 
social institutions prevailing in other lands ; of the state of the arts, 
manufactures and commercial relations, and the nature of the ruling 
industries among different peoples ; or to what extent is such reading 
likely to profit one to whom Eome is a town in the interior of the 
State of New York, aud Waterloo a station on the New York Central 
Eailway ; or to whom, finally, the names of Shakespeare and Milton, 
Napoleon and Wellington, and Gladstone and Disraeli, and even per- 
haps Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and Jackson, are so 
many unmeaning sounds ? If individual effectiveness depends on 
individual intelligence, if the products of industry are better and more 
abundant in proportion as the judgment which guides its operations is 
more and more enlightened by cultivation, then it is plain that no limit 
ought to be placed to the extent to which the State should provide for the 
education of every citizen, but that which the nature of the problem 
itself imposes. By this I mean. to say that we are not to discriminate 
between studies as in their own nature suitable or unsuitable to be 
taught in our schools. No kind of useful knowledge is unsuitable, if 
we have room for it. In fact, if the potentiality of benefit to the body 
politic is to be our only criterion in judging of the extent proper to be 
given to our teaching, leaving out of view possible differences of intrin- 
sic value between different descriptions of knowledge, then, whether 
by the term benefit we understand a moral or a material benefit, there 
can be no doubt that the advantage relinquished for every subject of 
study rejected is greater than that secured by any one of those retained. 
This is true, because the benefits of mental culture increase in geomet- 
rical ratio, while the instrumentalities of such culture are increased 
only arithmetically; so that, as I have said before, if it were possible 
that a whole people could, one aud all, receive the same high mental 
training which in the actual state of things falls to the lot of only the 



23 

few, the advantage to the State would be beyond computation. We are 
not, then, to draw a line among the various possible subjects of study, 
and say that these are fit and proper by reason of any thing in their 
own nature to be taught in our public schools, and these are not. If 
there is to be a selection (and inexorable conditions, such as limitation 
of the time at command, may require this), we may- properly indicate 
an order of choice, because some subjects are more directly practical 
than others, and some are auxiliary to all others; but when finally our 
line is drawn, we must say — these on this side we include, because we 
can make room for them ; the rest we exclude because unfortunately 
we cannot. 

If I am asked where such a line should be drawn, I reply that that 
is a practical question, which could not be answered here without 
going into a detail inappropriate to this place. I may suggest, how- 
ever, one or two governing principles which must be borne in mind 
in drawing it. First, the comprehensiveness of the course of instruc- 
tion must bear some due proportion to the time it is to occupy. That 
time should be as great as possible, but experience has perhaps settled 
what is possible in the case. The law should fix a minimum time, 
and up to that minimum should make attendance compulsory, speci- 
fying for this purpose the limiting ages. Secondly, it must be borne 
in mind that, while many things may be taught if circumstances 
allow, some things must be taught. Practical utility must here take 
precedence even of intrinsic value. Reading, spelling, writing aiiU 
arithmetic will of course lead all the rest. After these will follow 
geography, physical, political and statistical; then the outlines of his- 
tory, particularly the history of our own country. To these I would 
add a succinct summary of the principles of civil government in its 
various forms, but chiefly those of our own Constitution, with the 
duties of the citizen under it; but, above all, the supreme duty, in 
every vote he gives, of voting for principles and not men. The bene- 
ficial effect of the inculcation of this idea in the morning of life, and 
before the blood has become heated in the excitements of political con- 
flicts, would be incalculable. There, if I were compelled to believe 
that nothing else could be admitted unless to the prejudice of these, I 
should say we must stop. But I believe there is room for much more • 
and in this belief I would propose to give the child some systematic 
knowledge of the objects by which he is surrounded in the natural 
world — of the elements, in short, of natural history; of the structure 
of his own body, and the functions of its organs ; — that is, of anatomy 
and physiology ; of the properties of matter, and of the laws of force — 
that is, of physics, mechanics and chemistry. In saying this, I wish 
not to be misunderstood. I would not, of course, attempt the absur- 
dity of teaching these vast subjects exhaustively. I would confine the 



24 

instruction to elementary facts which can be definitely stated ; and 
which, besides being practically useful, might serve as a foundation 
on which the learner might build, as opportunity should favor, in the 
future. 

In addition to these subjects, room should also, in my view, by all 
means be made for vocal music, an exercise suited to serve rather as a 
recreation than as a task, and by periodically relieving the strain upon 
the mental powers, to quicken their activity while at work. For rea- 
sons very similar, I would add the art of drawing ; which is further 
recommended by the fact that there is hardly a walk of life in which 
the possession of such an accomplishment is not capable of many 
useful and valuable applications. 

I am not, however, proposing a course of common school study. I 
am only specifying subjects which it seems to be not impracticable to 
teach in common schools. Of grammar I have said nothing, because 
I doubt the usefulness of synthetic methods in presenting difficult 
abstractions to the minds of the young ; but instead of this I would 
teach the English language, by methods of a practical character ; 
such, for instance, as the construction of sentences, the comparison of 
correct and faulty forms of expression, practice in epistolary writing, 
and in simple narrative and descriptive composition, and the reading 
of selections from good authors on topics of familiar knowledge. 

But in any system of instruction, primary or superior, it is not 
enough to prescribe what shall be taught or how much shall be 
taught — the question Jioio these things shall be taught is one of even 
higher importance. By this I mean that the benefit derived from 
schools depends perhaps even more upon the teacher than upon the 
substance of the teaching. It is an unfortunate fact that, in the busi- 
ness of instruction, incompetency may conceal itself and inefficiency 
escape detection more easily than in most other employments. It 
requires no extraordinary ability nor [any great mental effort on the 
part of the tutor to assign tasks in text-books, and to go through, with 
becoming dignity, the process which is called " hearing recitation." 
Moreover, in these exercises time may be so well filled up as to make 
it seem that the teacher has really contributed something to the pro- 
gress of his pupil, although all that he has done has been to listen to 
a form of words repeated by rote. Now a teacher who is I'eally a 
teacher must be a positive force in the educational process. He must 
have that peculiar skill which shows itself in the power to make the 
pupil think. This with many is a gift of nature, others acquire it 
by experience, but all find that it is perfected with time. 

One important condition, therefore, of the usefulness of the teacher 
is that he shall be permanent. If I am rightly informed, this 
remark suggests the weak point in our system of common school 



25 

education at this time. The position of teacher in the elementary 
schools is, I am told, very generally sought by young persons who are 
conscious of no special aptness for it or predilection towards it ; who 
have neither desire nor design to become, teachers by profession ; who 
seek this employment, in fact, only as a temporary means of subsist- 
ence on which to rely while they are looking round for something bet- 
ter—fitting themselves perhaps for professional life, or waiting to 
make up their minds; without motive therefore to improve themselves 
in an art which they are not likely to practice long enough to make 
improvement an object ; and with every temptation to lapse into a 
dull routine and rest contented in a perfunctory discharge of duty. 
This is a serious evil. It ought to be prevented if possible. There 
might perhaps be a rule to prohibit the engagement of persons as 
teachers, who make no secret of their intention not in any proper 
sense to be teachers. I fear, however, that the evil lies too deep to be 
reached by any mere rule of administration. I fear that the real dif- 
ficulty in the case, when looked into, will be found in the inadequacy 
of the compensation which the teachers in general in our common 
schools receive. No man of ability can be expected to give up the 
best years of his life to aa occupation by which he barely lives, and 
which, however long and faithfully he may serve in it, holds out no 
promise that he shall ever live any bettei*. If we would have perma- 
nent teachers we must pay for permanence, just as, if we would have 
good teachers, we must pay for excellence. In the educational no less 
than in the commercial world, equivalency of values must be the rule 
of all exchanges. The fact that in our common schools — I do not say 
invariably and everywhere, but in many places and often — the teacher 
is less liberally remunerated (and this not relatively, regard being had 
to the quality and dignity of the labor, and the time and cost of edu- 
cating the laborer to his work, but positively in the actual amount of 
dollars and cents paid over and received) than journeyman carpenters, 
bricklayers, paviors, and stone masons in the city of New York, is a 
fact which draws after it its inevitable consequences, inferiority of qual- 
ification, lack of zeal, perpetual change. 

I think it quite certain that no class of public servants — taken, I 
mean as a class ; there are no doubt exceptional cases — are so ill-com- 
pensated as teachers. No class, on the other hand, render services of 
higher value to the public ; nor is there any class whose competency, 
whose efficiency, whose fidelity, and whose devotion to their work more 
deeply concern the public. If liberal compensation is necessary to se- 
cure the services of good and capable men as educators of the children 
of the people, then such liberality is an infinitely higher benefit to the 
public that pays than to the individuals who receive the pay. For it 
is not only a dictate of common sense, but a truth deduced from the 



26 

experience of all time, that uo investment pays more richly than that 
which makes its return in the treasures of cultivated intellect. Were 
I then asked to say in what manner, in my opinion, a people could 
most strikingly illustrate the economical policy which consists in sav- 
ing the pence at the expense of the pounds, I should answer — by 
starving the teachers of their children. 

But supposing that the State leaves us nothing to complain of on 
the score of liberality, what shall be our security that its munificence 
may not be misapplied — that is to say, assuming the provisions to be 
quite adequate to command the best talents and the highest attain- 
ments, how shall we guard against the danger that inferior men may 
after all secure the benefit of these provisions ? No teacher in any 
educational institution, from the highest to the lowest, ought to be 
engaged, unless upon satisfactory testimonials from competent author- 
ities ; or, unless, in rare instances, upon the still more satisfactory 
evidence of established celebrity. For our common schools this point 
has been carefully guarded by the provisions of our existing laws. 
Local officers, styled commissioners, elected by the people, are charged 
with the duty of testing the qualifications of candidates for appoint- 
ment. The certificate of the commissioner is' evidence of the eligi- 
bility of the candidate. The system is simple ; it ought to be suffi- 
cient; but if I am correctly informed, it has one point of weakness. 
The tenure by which the commissioner holds his office is a source of 
embarrassment, and makes him liable to a kind of pressure which 
interferes with his independence, If he is rigorously conscientious, 
he is liable to ,be undermined and displaced to make room for some 
one less scrupulous. The result is that his certificates are sometimes 
wrung from him in cases where his judgment tells him they are unde- 
served ; and the security intended by the law breaks down. It is true 
we have a chief of the department, or State superintendent of public 
instruction, who might, if he pleased, enforce upon his subordinates 
the exercise of a rigor which, in the absence of such support, they 
hesitate to employ ; but unfortunately the State superintendent is 
hampered by similar influences, and subject to the same dangers. 

What is wanted is that this matter should be placed in the control 
of some intelligent and permanent body of men, having the inde- 
pendence that permanence in office only can insure ; a body serving 
without emolument, and therefore disinterested ; a body well educated 
and conversant with the business of education, and therefore entirely 
competent; a body composed of men of high character and distin- 
guished eminence, and therefore possessing something of the dignity 
and commanding something like the respect which is accorded to 
judges on the bench. Certainly if, in the administration of justice, it 
is desirable that there shall be some assurance of permanence, some 



27 

security for independence, some immunity from the disturbances of 
factious agitation, some distance of removal from the arena of popu- 
lar excitements, some exemption from the hazards that wait on pop- 
ular caprice, all these things are quite as desirable in the manage- 
ment and direction of a process so momentous in its objects, so compli- 
cated in its machinery, so widely extended in its operations, aud so 
universal in the interests it involves, as the education of a people. In 
the organization of such a directing body, permanence next to respect- 
ability is the characteristic which takes precedence in importance of 
every other ; for in educational matters a policy which may not be abso- 
lutely the best, if steadily and consistently pursued, is better than one 
which is always changing, whatever may be the merit of its successive 
phases. To change a policy from year to year is as bad as to change 
text-books from year to year ; a practice undeniably bad, though each 
new book may be better than the one discarded; and bad for the rea- 
son that we do not after all want to teach books but subjects, and it is 
quite possible to teach subjects, and teach them well, without any 
books at all. That the doctrine here affirmed is in accordance with 
the common sense of mankind, is manifest from the example of the 
higher institutions of learning; of which all without any exception 
are placed under the administration of supervisory boards whose mem- 
bers hold their places in permanence, or of which the changes are so 
gradual as to be practically insensible. 

The Board of Regents of this University is precisely such a body 
as I have had in mind in these remarks. It is a body already in exist- 
ence ; its organic law insures its permanence ; it is composed of ])re- 
cisely the right kind of men, thoroughly educated, conversant with 
educational aff;iirs, personally and justly eminent, and by long experi- 
ence in the supervision of the superior education of the State familiar 
with all the practical details of administrative duty. To extend its 
care to the primary education also would be to introduce unity in place 
of diversity, and to consolidate the entire educational system of the 
State into one complete and perfect whole. 

Nor in making this change would it be necessary that the present 
organization of tlie common school system should be in any essentia^ 
particular changed. Let the organization stand, but transfer simply 
to the Regents the authority to appoint the functionaries who now 
receive office from the Legislature or from local constituencies. Let 
the Regents prescribe the tests to which aspirant teachers shall be sub- 
jected. Let the officers appointed by them apply these tests, as they 
will then be able to do, feaidessly and independently, and the evils 
which have been signalized as inseparable from the system in its pres- 
ent form, will at once disappear. 



28 

How far the proposition here made may be acceptable to this Board 
of Eegents, I have not inquired, and am unadvised. Should it 
be thought to increase too largely the burden of their responsibility, 
there remains the alternative expedient of creating another and par- 
allel body, a State Board of Education, for example, having the same 
relation to the system of primary education which the Board of 
Eegents sustains to the secondary and superior. To either of these pro- 
posals I can see no objection; to the continuance of the present system 
unmodified I can see many. 

I have thus endeavored to present my views as to the duty of the 
State in regard to popular education, resting them on what seem to 
me to be rational and logical grounds. Without venturing to antici- 
pate for them universal concurrence, I still think that they will find 
approval in the educational, if not in the political world. 

The subject of the higher education comes next in order. Recur- 
ring to what has been said of the importance to the efficiency of 
schools of well qualified teachers, it is hardly necessary to say that to 
insure the supply of such teachers is a matter of precisely equal 
importance ; nor to add that such supply cannot be looked for from 
the elementary schools themselves. If it is true that the art of the 
teacher consists not so much in imparting information as in stimulat- 
ing thought and guiding the process of thinking, then it is true that 
the accomplished teacher must possess a culture much higher than the 
highest level to which he can hope to lift his pupil. In this consider- 
ation we find a suggestion of the necessity, and a justification of the 
policy, of creating institutions for the express purpose of forming 
teachers. This is only to adopt in our warfare against ignorance, the 
most dangerous of foes to the progress or even the maintenance of 
civilization, the same policy which our national government pursues 
in training up men competent to direct its operations of ofi'ense or 
defence against its foreign enemies. Our State has not been regard- 
less of its duty in this respect. We have numerous admirable exam- 
ples of the class of institutions here indicated. The State has also 
acted wisely in enlisting in the same work the numerous well- 
appointed and ably conducted academies under the supervision of this 
Board of Eegents, by providing for the formation in these, of classes 
expressly for the training of teachers. These numerous schools of sec- 
ondary instruction, which dot at nearly equal intervals the surface of 
our wide territory, though chiefly the creation of private effort, con- 
stitute an element in our educational system of inappreciable value. 
Besides contributing in the manner just described to maintain the 
character of the schools below, they afford to many thousands of the 
youth of our State, prevented by circumstances from resorting to the 
higher institutions, educational advantages in many cases almost 



29 

equal to those of the colleges themselves; and their influence in ele- 
vating the standard of general intelligence in the State is far-reaching 
and powerful. They fill up all the wide interval between the element- 
ary education which is universal, and the so-called liberal education to 
which hardly one in two or three thousand aspires. In regard to them 
the State has therefore an important duty to fulfill. It should see 
that they are sufficiently numerous to be everywhere within reach of 
the people, sliould contribute to their support so far as is necessary to 
guaranty their educational respectability, and should so far control 
their operations and supervise their methods as to insure their effi- 
cient management. 

In addition to this, though these schools will necessarily be for the 
comparatively few, who should therefore pay for the advantages they 
derive from them, it would seem to me a just and judicious policy for 
the State to provide that the deserving whom indigence might other- 
wise debar from their privileges, and who aspire to a higher culture 
than they can obtain in the elementary schools, should have access to 
them free of charge — a policy which might easily be extended to the 
colleges also. The colleges are necessary to complete and crown the 
edifice of the educational system. They furnish the teachers to the 
schools of secondary grade, as these last in turn furnish teachers to 
the primary. If therefore no colleges were spontaneously to arise, it 
would be incumbent on the State to create them. In general, how- 
ever, the creation of colleges at the State charge, and for distinctly 
State purposes, is unnecessary. But one example, so far as my infor- 
mation extends, exists in our country, in which a college established 
by the State is also maintained by the State as a recognized organ of 
the government, by annual appropriations in the civil list; and that is 
the University of South Carolina. In most of the States, however, 
which have been formed out of territory once belonging to the 
United States, State universities exist, liberally endowed by the 
Federal Government, and directly subject to legislative control. Yale 
college and Harvard university were both created and endowed by the 
colonial legislatures of the States to which they respectively belong ; 
and till quite recently, in each case, the State retained a representation 
in the supervisory board. 

But however it may have been expedient or necessary in earlier 
times to create colleges by State authority, as an indispensable part of 
the educational machinery of the State itself, the present need seems 
to be rather to restrain than to foster the multiplication of such insti- 
tutions. We have too many colleges, and not too few. The excessive 
multiplication of these institutions is not only not a good, but is a 
very positive evil ; because, as the number increases, the average 



30 

strength diminishes, with an effect upon the average quality of colle- 
giate instruction as unfortunate as it is unavoidable. 

There are some well ascertained and interesting facts bearing on 
this question which are believed not to be generally known. The 
common impression probably is that to multiply the number of col- 
leges in the country increases correspondingly the number of college 
students in the country. But this is a mistake. Statistics prove it to 
be a total mistake. The aggregate number of students attending all 
the colleges in the country put together bears a pretty steady ratio to 
the total population of the country, a ratio which remains practically 
unaltered, however the number of colleges may vary. Practically un- 
altered, I say, but I am sorry to be obliged to add that, when distant 
periods are compared, the proportion of students to population, in 
spite of the multiplication of colleges in the meantime, appears grad- 
ually to diminish. 

Taking the country through, the aggregate number of students, 
candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, in our colleges, is to the 
total population of the countr}', nearly in the ratio of one to twenty- 
five hundred. Less than half a century ago it was not far from one to 
two thousand. In half a century the population has increased nearly 
fourfold, the number of colleges threefold, and the aggregate number 
of the students in arts in all the colleges put together, but little more 
than twofold. These figures speak for themselves. 

Now colleges are costly establishments, endowed chiefly by private 
munificence ; and liberality in this direction, as in every other, has its 
limit, which cannot be overdrawn. Many colleges, therefore, being 
interpreted, means feeble colleges; feeble whether as it respects the at 
tendance they can attract, or the material resources they can com- 
mand. 

On the other hand, when the large expenditure has been incurred 
which is necessary to equip properly a college for one hundred stu- 
dents, this college may just as well receive two hundred; and but a 
very moderate addition to the outlay will suffice to fit it for a thousand. 

Now the present aggregate population of the country, irrespective 
of color, is probably not below forty-five millions. At the ratio of 
one to twenty-five hundred, the whole country furnishes at this mo- 
ment but eighteen thousand undergraduate students in arts. How 
many colleges are needed for these ? At two hundred students in a 
college, ninety. At five hundred, which would be much better, thirty- 
six — hardly one to a State. But we have actually more than four 
hundred. 

The educational statistics from which these inferences are drawn are 
the results of a long-continued and laborious inquiry conducted by 



31 

myself personally. If a test of their trustworthiness is demanded, it 
may be found in the returns made to the Regents of the University 
from the colleges of our own State. It matters not what year we 
select. One will answer as well as another. I choose the latest pub- 
lished, the returns for the year 1877. In that year the number of 
male students in arts present in all the colleges of the State — sixteen 
in number — amounted in the aggregate to eighteen hundred and fifty- 
five. But assuming the population of the State to be five millions, 
which does not overstate it, the ratio of one to twenty-five hundred 
should give her two thousand. The returns, I admit, do not take ac- 
count of the young men belonging to our State who may be in attend- 
ance in the colleges of other States, nor of the probably smaller num- 
ber from other States who are present in ours; but on the other hand 
they fail likewise to take account of the very large proportion of the 
students enrolled as collegiate students in the College of the City of 
New York who do not proceed nor intend to proceed to degrees in 
arts, and whose number is much more than sufficient to counterbal- 
ance any difference against us in the comparison of inter-State ex- 
changes. 

If this test proves any thing, it proves that the ratio of one to 
twenty-five hundred is too high and not too low. This is only to say 
that it more than confirms the previously stated deductions drawn 
from a more general inquiry. 

Some advantages are claimed to result from the multiplication of 
colleges. It is fair to consider these. The first is that, by such mul- 
tiplication, colleges are brought nearer to those who need them, and 
are reached with less expenditure of money and of time. This argu- 
ment might have had weight fifty years ago ; it has very little now. 
If there were but one college in a State, and if every student should 
attend the college of his own State, hardly one anywhere need be sep- 
arated from his home by twenty-four hours. If, on the other hand, a 
college were provided for every two or three hundred students, and if 
these were equidistantly distributed through the country, the question 
of time would cease to have any significance. Large as is the present 
number of our colleges, nine students out of ten, perhaps ninety-nine 
in a hundred, have to travel to reach them. If we had but one-quar- 
ter as many, the average time of travel would hardly be increased an 
hour. 

Another reason of greater weight than the foregoing in favor of the 
multiplication of colleges is found in the fact that every religious 
denomination regards it as a duty to provide for the youth of its own 
persuasion all the machinery of the superior education. This sense 
of obligation seems to be not in the least diminished by a considera- 
tion of the fact that the class-room instruction in all colleges, whether 



32 

State or denominational, is strictly secular. The direct religious in- 
fluences exerted by such colleges result mainly from the observance of 
peculiar forms in the daily devotional exercises of the academic com- 
munity, or from the direct inculcation of characteristic doctrines dur- 
ing public worship, as conducted in the college chapel on the Sabbath ; 
that is, from tlie maintenance at college of the same influences to 
which the youth is subject at home. There is, however, something 
more than this, though it is something not so distinctly definable. 
The mysterious force of sympathy, whereby men, whether young or 
old, enlisted under a common banner, and associated together in num- 
bers, react upon each other, encourage each other, confirm and 
strengthen each other in their views, their convictions, their aspira- 
tions, their zeal, exerts an influence of incalculable power in intensify- 
ing the spirit of religious fellowship. Thus the denominational col- 
lege benefits the denomination which maintains it, not so much by 
teachings directed to the understanding, as by more subtile influences 
appealing to the heart. With some of these, however, are associated 
proper theological schools, and these are instrumentalities of a more 
positive character. 

Another cause determining the multiplication of colleges, which is 
without the same Justification, is found in the ambition — a very laud- 
able one — of thriving towns to build up within themselves all the ap- 
pliances of the most advanced civilization. Public spirit, always a 
praiseworthy sentiment, is sometimes eager to create instrumentalities 
for good in advance of the necessity ; and when once a splendid enter- 
prise has been projected, promising honor, eclat, and perhaps more 
material benefit, to the residents of the locality which its accomplish- 
ment is to illustrate, the imaginations of a whole community become 
excited, and local pride is stimulated to a degree which generally 
makes the first success comparatively easy. The misfortune is that 
the enthusiasm which is equal to the effort of initiating an undertak- 
ing of this character, seldom suffices to sustain it through the unavoid- 
able difficulties of succeeding years; so that a college which owes its 
birth to a generous impulse full of promise and cheer, may be destined 
only to add another to the many already existing examples of mis- 
placed generosity and mistaken endeavor. 

Now, in what I have said of the multiplication of colleges I wish 
not to be misunderstood. I do not object to many colleges because 
they are many, nor to small colleges because they are small. If they 
are all equally good, and all really good, it matters not, educationally 
speaking, how many there are. We cannot have too much of a good 
thing. But that a college may be a good college, it must be well en- 
dowed; for without ample resources it can neither possess the instru- 
mentalities which are indispensable to thorough instruction, nor 



33 

command the men most competent to use the instrumentalities. As 
I have said before, in education, as certainly as in commerce, quality 
will command its price. 

My objection to the multiplication of colleges, therefore, rests upon 
the economical ground that, since the work these institutions have to 
do is the same, whether there be many or few, the increase of the 
number, quality remaining the same, involves to the public a very 
large and quite unnecessary increase in the cost of doing it. But my 
objection goes further: with an undue multiplication of collegiate 
institutions, the human probability is that quality will not remain 
the same. And if it does not, then the public suffers not only in an 
economical, but also in an educational sense. 

The evil resulting from this cause would not be so serious if all our 
colleges were not clothed with university powers. The distinction is 
one so wholly disregarded in this country, that it would seem to be 
almost unknown. Colleges originally grew up as the organs of uni- 
versities; first to lodge, afterward to lodge and aid in teaching univer- 
sity students. They had nothing to do with degrees. The early 
continental colleges have chiefly perished ; the British survive. They 
are learned, wealthy and powerful, but they cannot confer degrees. 
Some French collegiate schools of more recent erection confer the 
degree of bachelor — no other. 

Now all our colleges are universities. How stands their number to 
the population ? In the east it is bad enough. New York, with her 
sixteen colleges, has one to three hundred and twenty thousand in- 
habitants ; Massachusetts, with her seven, one to two hundred and 
thirty thousand; Connecticut, with her three, one to two hundred 
thousand ; and Ehode Island, with a total population of two hundred 
and sixty thousand, has one only. Further west it is much worse 
Pennsylvania has twenty-nine colleges, or one to about one hundred 
and thirty-five thousand inhabitants ; Illinois has thirty, or one to 
one hundred thousand ; Tennessee, twenty-seven, or one to ninety-five 
thousand ; Indiana and Missouri, each twenty-three, or one to ninety 
thousand ; Ohio, thirty-seven, or one to eighty thousand ; and Iowa, 
twenty-one, or one to seventy thousand. 

The total number of colleges in all the states together is about four 
hundred and twenty-five, or one to a little more than one hundred 
thousand. When I say about, I mean as nearly as it is possible to 
find out. One would suppose, considering the high grade of these 
institutions — high at least in assumption — that no fact in all statisics 
ought to be more easily ascertainable than the number of colleges in 
the United States ; yet so far is this from being the case, that the 
effort to arrive at the exact truth on the subject has baffled the most 
patient and most persevering industry of every investigator who has 
3 



34 

ever attempted it. What with the uprising of new and hopeful en- 
terprises on the one hand, and the down-tumbling of older (not 
always old) and rickety concerns on the other, the absolute total for 
any given year is never certain, and for any two succeeding years is 
never the same. If the estimated number I have given is too large 
to-day (and I do not think it is), it will probably be too small before 
another year rolls round. 

It is inconceivable that this great multitude of educational institu- 
tions, all calling themselves by a common name, can be all of uniform 
merit, and all equally deserving of the confidence of the public. In 
fact, if we examine the roll of those who attend upon their teaching, 
we shall see that they cannot be ; for in very many instances the great 
mass of the students are, in age and in advancement, children, attend- 
ng what is styled a preparatory course; while a handful, numbering, 
from half a dozen to twenty, are separately classified and grouped 
under what is pretentiously entitled the Deimrtment of Arts. These 
institutions are in fact merely secondary schools, which have been 
become seized with the ambition to add to their dignity by calling 
themselves colleges. There are, under the care of this Board of 
Regents, some three hundred academies, whose work is intrinsically 
better and of higher grade than that of half the institutions included 
in the list of American colleges published by the Bureau of Education 
at Washington. 

In one of our largest western States, I am informed that under a 
general law any seven men who may associate themselves together 
and raise the pitiful sum of five thousand dollars, are authorized to 
constitute themselves a Board of Trustees, organize a college, and 
proceed to confer degrees in arts. The value of a degree conferred by 
such a body may be easily understood. 

Now why should I concern myself, why should you concern your- 
selves, why should any of us concern ourselves about this eruption of 
feeble colleges, sham colleges, often mushroom colleges, breaking out 
in epidemic form all over the surface of the land ? Why not allow 
their founders, if it amuses them, to mimic academic ceremonial, and 
play at the annual manufacture of laureates, regular and honorary, 
without comment and without interference ? Simply because these 
laurels, which are thus lavishly scattered abroad, are the insignia, of 
at least have hitherto been the insignia, guaranty, stamp and attesta- 
tion of genuine scholarship, awarded by the recognized representatives 
of the highest learning. To bestow them on so slight an assurance 
of deserving, to allow them to be bestowed by self constituted authori- 
ties of no recognized standing or weight of personal character, is to 
pervert their intent, debase their value, and utterly destroy their sig- 
nificancy. To an American who has been accustomed to see these 



35 

distinctions dispensed so lightly, and who is not in the least surprised 
to find, in every twentieth village he visits, a tribunal, neither august 
nor awe-inspiring, fully empowered to dispense them, it would be 
difficult to conceive or appreciate the value which was once attached 
to an academic degree in the Old World, and which clings to it 
there even yet. During the medieval period an academic degree was 
almost equivalent to an order of nobility, or to a decoration bestowed 
by a monarch. We may perhaps be able to conceive the honor and 
deference which the stamp and seal of high erudition carried with it 
by calling to mind the fact that a very little learning, even the mere 
ability to read and write, was sufficient to secure to its possessor ex- 
emption from the ordinary penalties of the criminal law. 

Degrees were not originally instituted as titular distinctions — the 
purpose which they principally subserve at present — they were certifi- 
cates of proficiency conveying the right, and imposing the duty, to 
teach in the institution conferring them. Hence, as the substance 
was more important than the name, the holder of the certificate was, 
in the earlier period of the history, invested with no title fixed by law, 
but was called indifferently a licentiate, a master (viz., of a school), or 
a doctor — that is to say, a teacher. The term Arts is simply the 
name given to the seven subjects of study taught in the schools of 
Charlemagne, and i^resunied in that day to embrace pretty much the 
whole circle of human knowledge — viz., the /riwrnw, consisting of 
grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and the quadrivium, of arithmetic, 
geometry, astronomy, and music. The origin of the term bachelor is 
uncertain. By some it is supposed to be a corruption of the words has 
chevalier, the lowest order of knighthood, as distinguished from the 
knight banneret ; by others, it is derived from the ceremonial of insti- 
tution, in which a staff {hacilla) was placed in the hands of the profi- 
cient. As the laurel is the traditional emblem of triumph achieved, 
the recipient of the honor was styled haccalaureatus, or bachelor. So 
far as can be discovered, these names were, for a century or more, used 
interchangeably; nor is it clearly settled precisely when and how they 
began to be distinctive of different orders of privilege; but after the 
middle of the thirteenth century it is certain that the term bachelor 
was used to distinguish the iriiperfect graduate, whose authority to 
teach could only be exercised under the direction of a licentiate or 
master ; while the licentiate was invested with authority to teach inde- 
pendently. The distinction was somewhat similar to that which ex- 
ists in American colleges between professor and tutor. The master 
was simply a licentiate of higher dignity but not of higher powers. 
The licentiate could be promoted to the master's degree on demand ; 
but the promotion was attended with expense. There being really no 
substantial difference between these two grades, the universities of the 



36 

more recent centuries have generally disused one or the other. In 
Great Britain the degree of master continues to be conferred, but not 
that of licentiate ; France retains licentiate, but has dropped the de- 
gree of master. The term doctor, originally the synonym of master, 
was in progress of time confined to the faculties of theology, of canon 
and civil law, and of medicine. It is chiefly from its later use as an 
honorary distinction that it has come, in our time, to be reckoned as 
the highest of the degrees in point of dignity. The doctorate in med- 
icine is an exception to this, for the reason that it has not been so 
used. 

From this account of the origin of degrees it will naturally be in- 
ferred that they were not bestowed indiscriminately even upon profi- 
cients. They were conferred only on those who desired and designed 
to teach. Such was not the desire or design of the students generally. 
They did not go to the university to get degrees. They went to learn. 
The aggregate number of students in the mediaeval universities was 
prodigious. At Paris, in the thirteenth century, it was no less than 
thirty thousand; at Oxford at the same time it was equally great; at 
Cambridge, hardly less. These British universities continued, down 
to the end of the sixteenth century, to maintain an attendance of fully 
five thousand each. As to the number of graduates, no published sta- 
tistics are known to me except those given by Huber in his history of 
the British universities; but these throw a great deal of light upeu 
the question. He gives the number of bachelors and masters of arts 
annually made at Cambridge for one hundred and sixty years, begin- 
ning at A. D. 1500 ; and the number of bachelors made annually at 
Oxford for nearly the same period. From these tables I find the aver- 
age for Cambridge of the first sixty years, when the average attend- 
ance was about five thousand, to have been thirty-five bachelors and 
twenty-two masters made annually. 

Since then a university of five thousand students produced only 
twenty-two masters of arts per annum, we see how it happened that 
the duty to teach in the same university, which accompanied the 
right to teach conferred by the degree, admitted of easy fulfillment. 
The multitude of students demanded a multitude of teachers, and the 
annual supply was not in excess of the annual demand. But as, in 
the exercise of this right, the graduate became ij) so facto a member of 
the governing body, and was distinguished by the title Magistei 
Regent, it was a natural consequence that the decree should become 
an object of desire, as well for the honor as for the privileges it con- 
veyed ; and hence that the number of graduates should increase. 
The tables of Huber show that it did so ; the average number of mas- 
ters annually graduated at Cambridge about the middle of the seven- 
teenth century, having been not far from tenfold greater than the corre- 



37 

sponding number for the century before — and this although the 
aggregate undergraduate attendance had largely diminished. Hence, 
in time, the supply of teachers began to exceed the demand, and num- 
bers were graciously absolved from their obligation. The masters 
thus relieved from duty, and also the regent masters when they ceased 
to teach, were styled Magistri non Regentes. Thus it happened that 
a degree came to be, what it is with us now, simply a title of honor, 
and an attestation of ascertained proficiency in learning and of superior 
intellectual culture. 

In the earlier universities the power to grant degrees was a conces- 
sion from the supreme head of the Church. Princes, who desired to 
found universities, made application for the privilege to the Pope. At 
a later period secular rulers claimed and exercised this power inde- 
pendently. The power of conferring degrees, however, could not be 
self -assumed ; it could only be exercised as a grant from the highest 
authorities of the church or State. But neither church nor State were 
by any means lavish in the concession of this important power. Be- 
fore the fifteenth century there were but five universities in all Ger- 
many, including Austria and Bohemia ; two in England ; and two or 
three in France. With the progress of time the number has increased ; 
but even at present there are but twenty-two German universities, in 
a population of forty-two millions, or about one to two millions; fif- 
teen in France, with a population of thirty-seven millions, or one to 
two and a half millions ; and four in England, with a population of 
twenty-three millions, or one to five and three-quarters millions. Le- 
gally there is but one university in France, of which the fifteen above 
named are branches, locally styled academies. From an enumeration 
made in 1860, it appears, that, in all Europe, the number of universi- 
ties is one hundred and eleven, in an aggregate population of three 
hundred millions ; giving one university to about two and, three-quar- 
ters millions of inhabitants. 

These simple statistical facts, without a superadded word of com- 
ment, abundantly explain how it happens that an academic degree pos- 
sesses a value in the British Islands and on the continent of Europe 
which it has not in America. The sources of honor are so few, their 
characters are so high, they embody a learning so profound, their 
teachers are in general so celebrated and of so universally recognized 
authority, and finally the tests to which they subject aspirants are so 
rigorous, that a certificate of proficiency received from them has a 
meaning that all the world can understand. 

All these advantages we have thrown away. We have not only mul- 
tiplied almost indefinitely these fountains of honor, but we have taken 
no care that, in their composition, they shall either represent learning 
or command reverence. A village parson, a village doctor, and a vil- 



38 

lage lawyer, supported by a banker, a shop-keeper or two, a manufac- 
turer, and perhaps a gentleman farmer, constitute very commonly the 
tribunal who are to dispense the precious distinctions which the con- 
servative wisdom of other times entrusted only to the honored hands 
of those whom universal consent pronounced to be the wisest and best. 
This tribunal, moreover, not merely bestows upon the juvenile aspir- 
ant to academic honors the customary certificate of his proficiency ; 
but, passing in review before its critical eye the theologians and the 
jurists and the statesmen, and the men of letters, and even the pro- 
fessors of the highest learning themselves, strews over the whole sur- 
face of the land, with a generosity as profuse as its discriminations are 
inscrutable, a periodical shower of honorary degrees. 

Can we not do something to remedy this miserable business ? Tak- 
ing up the other morning one of our leading daily journals, my eye 
fell upon an article entitled " The Commencement Season." The 
editor lamented, as I have been lamenting, the degradation which has 
befallen the degrees in arts in our country. He ascribed this deplora- 
ble fact, as I have ascribed it, to the indefinite multiplication of 
degree-giving institutions, the absence in many instances of any kind 
of guaranty in respect either to the thoroughness of their teaching or 
the learning of their ieachers, and the absolute certainty that they are 
too often sadly deficient in both these particulars; and he concluded 
with the observation that, if academic degrees are hereafter to com- 
mand any respect, it can only be secured by writing after the letters 
which denote the distinction the name of the college conferring it. 
Even that perhaps cannot save them ; for when any significant symbol, 
badge, or token, especially if it have been originally of a decorative 
character, becomes an object of public ridicule and contempt, it cannot 
be restored to the favor it has lost, even though covered with the man- 
tle of the highest respectability. 

Can we not, then, do something to remedy this lamentable state of 
things? There is a remedy — not easy of application, perhaps, 
because, to be effectual, it requires the concurrence of many inde- 
pendent wills — but a remedy nevertheless if we will adopt it. It is this; 
Let the State reserve to itself the exclusive right of granting academic 
degrees. So far as this right is concerned, I would, if it were pos- 
sible, make tabula rasa of the entire existing system ; that is to say, 
without interfering in the least with the scholastic operations of exist- 
ing colleges, I would withdraw from all of them the degree-giving 
power, and place them all upon the same footing as the colleges of 
Oxford and Cambridge. But, inasmuch as that would be an infringe- 
ment of vested rights, it would be impracticable to do it unless the 
power were voluntarily relinquished. Leave, then, the existing col- 
leges alone, but allow no more to be created with this power. 



39 

Let each State, then, establish for itself a State university, charged 
with no duty of teaching, but empowered to charter teaching colleges, 
at its discretion, in all the faculties; to prescribe general rules for 
their conduct, to exercise supervision over them, to examine all candi- 
dates for admission to them, and all proficients who may he presented 
by them for degrees ; and, finally, to confer those degrees by diploma 
under the seal of the university, setting forth in such diploma the 
name of the college presenting the candidate. As it respects existing 
colleges, though they would retain the right to issue diplomas jn their 
own names and under their own seals, I would still extend t,o them 
the same system of examinations, relieving them from the task of 
testing the qualifications of candidates either for admission or for 
graduation. 

The State University, therefore, as I conceive it, would be a body 
possessing powers considerably resembling those of the University of 
London ; yet not altogether, for though, like that university, it would 
examine for degrees, it would not examine all comers indiscriminately, 
but only those presented by the colleges. It would also be competent 
to exercise a jurisdiction and would be charged with responsibilities 
which do not belong to that at all. 

Were this scheme to be adopted in every State, although it might 
not, except by voluntary surrender, diminish the number of our 
degree-conferring institutions, it would nevertheless, for all practical 
purposes, reduce this number to thirty-eight. Furthermore, as each 
State University would necessarily be compelled to employ a per- 
manent board of professional examiners, who, from the dignity and 
responsibility of their office, would naturally be, like those of the 
University of London, men of profound learning and usually men of 
celebrity, its diplomas would all carry with them a stamp of authority, 
which is sadly wanting to many of those now issued. Under this sys- 
tem, the sound colleges would be distinguished by the uniformity with 
which their candidates would secure approval; the feeble, unsound, or 
specious would be compelled to strengthen and reform themselves, or 
would be crowded out of the competition. 

Now in this State of New York the actual condition of things in 
our educational system is such as to make very easy, and almost to 
invite, the trial of this experiment. We have a State University 
actually in existence. It possesses in a measure the very powers 
which the scheme contemplates. 

It is competent to charter colleges with faculties of arts and facul- 
ties of medicine, but not with faculties of law or faculties of theology. 
It possesses the right of supervision and of visitation, not only over 
the colleges created by itself, but over those previously in existence. 
It has the power to grant, by diploma issued under its seal, all such 



40 

academic degrees as are known to or are usually conferred by any 
incorporated college or university in Europe, except degrees in arts. 

The powers of this institution, therefore, need only to be somewhat 
enlarged, and its duties and responsibilities to be somewhat increased, 
to enable it to fullfil all the functions proposed in the scheme I have 
submitted. As to its form, it needs no change. 

Could this plan be adopted in this State only, it is hardly too much 
to hope that the salutary results of the example would, in jjrogress of 
time, lead to the adoption of the same plan by sister States ; so that, 
at a period not quite hopelessly distant in the fnture, the chaos that 
involves the superior edncation of the country might be reduced to 
some order ; and all its organs and representatives might command 
and deserve the same degree of public confidence which is now 
awarded only to the few. 

The views I have thus presented are not by any means new with me. 
I have entertained them many years. When the plan first presented 
itself to my mind it seemed so feasible that I was sanguine enough to 
believe, it need only be presented to be accepted. I ventured there- 
fore with deference to lay it, first of all, as seemed to be most fitting, 
before the zealous friend of education then at the head of the Univer- 
sity, the late Chancellor Pruyn. 

And here let me pause for a moment to pay, in passing, my feeble 
but sincere tribute of honor, reverence, and affection to the memory 
of the distinguished public servant and estimable man whose name I 
have just spoken, 

John Van Schaiek Lansing Pruyn was one of those rare and noble 
specimens of humanity whom Providence sends occasionally into the 
world to serve as type and model of the good citizen. Endowed by 
nature with a generous heart, a clear intellect, a sound understanding, 
a well-balanced judgment, and an instinctively refined taste — natural 
gifts to which a superior education had superadded all the advantages 
which a liberal and scholarly culture could bestow — he was admira- 
bly fitted to fill any position of trust or responsibility in social or civic 
life ; and there was none to which he was called which he did not 
adorn. 

The representative of this city and district in the councils of the 
State and of the nation ; a leading member of numerous organiza- 
tions established under State authority or by private associations for 
the promotion of useful or benevolent objects; an energetic man of 
business, intimately associated in the direction of financial institu- 
tions or business corporations wielding vast capital and involving in 
the wisdom of their administration the interests of the entire commu- 
nity ; learned and able in his chosen profession of the law; an active, 
earnest, and most influential promoter of education, as well in the 



41 

local institutions which received his personal care, as in this Board of 
Kegents, of which he was for thirty-three years a member and for 
nearly sixteen years its Chancellor and presiding officer, in every 
capacity he left behind him an honorable record of duty conscien- 
tiously fulfilled, and of substantial practical results successfully 
accomplished. 

In his personal character he was all that is admirable. Severe in 
integrity and unbending in principle, he was also honorable in his 
impulses, kindly in his disposition, gracious in his manner, affable in 
his address, interesting and instructive in his conversation — produc- 
ing thus upon those who met him even only once an impression that 
was never effaced. 

His religious convictions were earnest and sincere ; yet, while he 
bore constant witness to the faith that was in him by his scrupulous 
observance of all the ordinances of the church of which he was a mem- 
ber, there was nothing exaggerated in his display of piety. His Chris- 
tian character was indeed in beautiful harmony with the definition of 
the apostle: Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is 
this: to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, and to 
keep himself unspotted from the world. 

He has passed away from us forever, but his memory lives. In this 
convocation over which he for so many years presided, it will be kept 
forever green. When in succeeding years we come together in our 
annual reunions at this capital, we shall still seem to catch the bright 
smile with which he used to greet us, we shall still seem to hear the 
cordial welcome which used to fall so genially from his lips. And 
when again we return to our separate fields of labor, his remembrance 
will accompany us as an animating and inspiring influence ; and if 
ever in our lessons to the young we would impress their tender mind 
wich a sense of the beauty of virtue or the grandeur of moral recti- 
tude, we shall recount to them the life history and jwint to the noble 
example of John V. L. Pruyn, the honest man, the generous friend, 
the untiring philanthropist, the devout Christian,the faithful public ser- 
vant, the pure patriot, the accomplished scholar, the energetic man of 
business — the good citizen. 

Eight years have passed — perhaps ten — since I presented my 
scheme to the late Chancellor, and was so happy as to secure from him 
an expression of his approbation. He advised me to lay it before other 
members of the Board of Eegents. None seemed to me more likely 
justly to appreciate its merits than the able and influential member 
who has since been so worthily called to fill his place, and who then 
represented in part the city of New York in the Senate of the State. 
Senator Benedict was also pleased to express his approval of the plan, 
considered abstractly upon its own merits. But his sagacity detected 



42 

an obstacle in the way of its practical success Avhich, I confess, had 
not occurred to me, or which, at any rate, had not occurred to me as 
serious ; it was this : If tlie Eegents assume the duty of conducting 
examinations, they must have permanent and able examiners; if they 
have examiners they must pay them ; in order to pay them they must 
have money; they cannot find money unless the legislature gives it; 
and to ask money for the purpose from the Legislature would be 
hardly more effectual than to call spirits from the vasty deep. This 
was a point on which the position of the Senator enabled him to speak 
from conviction — it was, I am sure, an unwilling conviction, and my 
courage fell. Till now, since that time, I have never dared to revive 
the subject; but the plan has still continued to linger in my mind as 
the heau 'ideal of an educational system for our State and country 
which ought to be realized, and which, at some period in the future, I 
would fain hope may be so still. 

And why should it not ? Could the insignificant sum necessary to 
carry this grand scheme into effect in our State be better appropriated ? 
Can a State whose material wealth is so vast as to be expressible only 
in thousands of millions, hesitate over the exercise of a modest liber- 
ality which is sure to build up for her a fund of intellectual wealth of 
a value inestimably greater. 

What, moreover, after all, would be the cost? Ten, twenty, possibly 
twenty-five thousand dollars annually — a poll-tax, say, of from two to 
five mills per head upon her five millions of inhabitants. This, too, to 
maintain a system of education of which the successful result in a sin- 
gle instance may pay her back a hundredfold the expenditure of a cen- 
tury ! 

But why should we be always asking for a mercenary return ? and 
for every miserable coin which we release from our reluctant grasp 
demand a guaranty in advance that it shall come back to us again, 
identically in kind ? Is the dignity of the State worth nothing? Is 
nothing due to the rank she holds among enlightened peoples ? 
Should not her institutions be in harmony with the advanced civiliza- 
tion of which she justly makes her boast ? I think our people, I 
think our Legislature even, when questions are concerned which 
involve the chiiracter of the State, do not always dole out theii" boun- 
ties with ^so parsimonious a hand ; and if I did, I could not look 
around me from the position in which I stand, and mark these sump- 
tuous columns, these glowing frescoes, these gilded mouldings, and 
these sculptured capitals, and not feel that I had done them injustice. 
It is impossible, I say to myself, that a legislature and a people can 
rear a monument of architectural splendor so magnificent as this, and 
do it in order, by this sign, to typify their greatness, their wealth, their 
cultivated taste, and their spirit of enlightened liberality; and can 



^ 



43 

yet be uucouscious how far tliis gorgeous show falls short, after all, of 
accomplishing its object in the noblest sense ; or insensible to the am- 
bition to illustrate their truest dignity and greatness by raising side 
by side with this grand achievement of material art, a monument so 
far superior to it in grandeur, that it shall endure and go on growing 
in beauty and splendor long after these polished stones we see around 
us shall have crumbled into ruin. 

But important changes which require the concurrence of many 
minds, simple though they may be, and desirable as they may appear, 
are rarely accomplished speedily. The spirit of conservatism yields 
slowly even to conviction ; and conviction, however intense in the indi- 
vidual, permeates the social mass as gradually as elevation of tempera- 
ture makes its silent way through a solid which has been heated at a 
single point. 

I look for no sudden success of the scheme I have outlined— hardly 
for any thing like a general though cautious approval. But if, as I 
beheve, it has a substantial basis of common sense, it will not fail to 
find silent favor with the thinking few, and through them it will yet 
recommend itself to others beyond ; till, by the slow process of diffu- 
sion, it shall at length leaven the whole lump of popular opinion. 
After that there will be no further trouble with legislatures, for legis- 
latures are never sparing of money, except when they fear the people. 

It is now ninety-two years since the passage of the act '' to institute 
an University within this state," under which the present organization 
has been since continuously operating. When the full century since it 
entered upon its beneficent work shall have been completed, the event 
will presumably be commemorated by some fitting ceremonial. It 
seems to me that I cannot more appropriately conclude this address, to 
which you have done me the honor to listen with a courteous attention 
which I fear I have somewhat abused, than by expressing the fervent 
hope — almost the belief — that on that interesting occasion, if not 
earlier, it may be possible to announce that the limitations upon the 
powers of the University of the State of New York, which, during 
the first century of its existence have so sensibly restricted its useful- 
ness, have been at length removed; and that henceforth, under its fos- 
tering care and wise supervision, the educational system of the State 
moulded into a form in which unity of design and uniformity of prac- 
tice shall pervade it throughout all its complicated ramifications, may 
be inspired with new life and new vigor, and become, in the succeed- 
ing centuries, the index, as it is to be the instrumentality, of an ever- 
rising mental culture and an ever-advancing civilization. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 481 946 6 



DEGREES CONFERRED. 



THURLOW WEED, of New Yoke City. 

JOHN EDWIN BRADLEY, of Albany. 
STEPHEN GALE TAYLOR, of Brooklyn. 

^otUx of Pcrtiftnic, 

{071 the nomination of the HomceoiMthic Medical Society of the State 

of New York.) 

EDWARD PAYSON FOWLER, of New York City. 
CORNELIUS ORMES, of Jamestown. 
CHARLES SUMNER, of Rochester. 



H 



Ik 



